The Thorn of Mind
by PsychicDreams
Summary: Secret admirers can sometimes be better left off in secret.


_Dear Watanuki-san,_

It is embarrassing for me to admit it, but I am deeply in love with you. The moment you stepped onto the campus, I almost fainted. Your presence is something that cannot be hid. You are a beautiful creature, one that should rightly so have wings and should hover above the world so you are not tainted by what is below.

Your mismatched eyes are distracting, but only in their dazzling luminance. One is deep and fathomless as the ocean blue, and the other the embodiment of the sun. I have not had the fortunate chance to see your smile, but I know that if I did, it would be nothing short of exquisite.

I shall write you again, if you do not find this offensive.

Yours truly,  
Your secret admirer

Doumeki had never seen Watanuki speechless before and he couldn't help peering over that slim shoulder to see what it was that Watanuki was reading. His eyes flashed in anger upon reading it. It bothered him even more that slowly, whether the other boy was aware of it or not, red was blooming on Watanuki's cheeks and spreading all the way up to his ears.

It had only been two months since they graduated from high school. Watanuki had mentioned that he hadn't thought he'd ever go to university, since of his money and spirit issues, but Yuuko had told him she'd taken care of that for him. Naturally, he would be working harder and longer for her to pay off that extra debt, which only sent Watanuki into fits of rage. Doumeki betted that secretly, Watanuki was glad he could go.

"I-I've never had a secret admirer before," Watanuki whispered, unable to take his eyes off the note in his hands that had been shoved in his locker.

"It's obviously not someone from high school then," Doumeki replied, powerless to stop his urge to rain on Watanuki's parade.

"Shut up, you!" Watanuki shot back and stomped ahead out of the campus.

Doumeki ran through his mind the list of possibilities. Most likely it was someone neither of them knew. Himawari had gone to a different, all-female college so even the very remote prospect of it being her was out of the question. He glanced around as he caught up with Watanuki, but there were so many people and it could be anyone.

He had a bad feeling about this.

Over the course of the next few weeks, Doumeki's bad feeling proved to be accurate. Almost every day, Watanuki would find another love letter from his secret admirer in his locker. Eagerly, he would open the note and read it and would always invariably blush. After about the fifth one, the writer had even gone so far to always include one or two lines of poetry and it was so sweet and sappy that it made Doumeki's teeth hurt just reading it.

His search for the source of these letters was becoming increasingly fruitless. Watanuki was convinced the writer was a cute, young girl, despite Doumeki's insistence it wasn't. The handwriting wasn't delicate enough for a female and had a definite masculine tone to it. Also, generally speaking from what he knew of girls, they were not the ones that searched out esoteric poems to include in their love letters.

Having consulted on the phone with Himawari when the problem began to escalate, she had told him that generally girls only wrote one or two love letters to a single individual before asking to meet them and they were, generally speaking, far more subtle than the whole poem idea.

After the third week of love letters, the admirer began to hint of a future meeting so that he or, more unlikely she, might 'express their love properly'. It plummeted his mood and his increasingly discontent attitude became more pronounced. It didn't help that Watanuki was always cooing over the letters, and showing him whether he didn't want to see them as they walked home.

Perhaps it would have only resulted in worry, but when week four hit, he began to get downright angry and irritated. The notes began to hint that the writer also disliked Doumeki and that Watanuki was unapproachable thanks to his presence. He began to suggest, for Doumeki could only think of this person as a he, that if Watanuki met with him, he'd be more than happy to walk Watanuki home. That Doumeki was unworthy of Watanuki's attentions.

Watanuki was oblivious, there was no arguing that. How they had managed to stay friends over the years and the other never noticing the archer's feelings was a testament to that. So it wasn't until the fourth letter after this change happened and it became clearer of the writer's dislike of Doumeki that was just short of out-and-out insults, that Watanuki began to notice it.

Unlike what he had expected, Watanuki didn't crow and start to tell him that someone else shared his point of view. In fact, amazingly enough, Watanuki looked a little surprised when he read it and vaguely concerned. Almost as if, if Doumeki dared to hope, some of the magic of newness of the love letters had faded and he was beginning to see them with a little bit of clarity.

Week five came around and soon Watanuki wasn't showing him the letters anymore. He would rush to his locker and read them as fast as he could and the moment Doumeki appeared around the corner, he would shove them in his pocket or book bag. When Doumeki would ask, as was his ritual the past few weeks, what the note said, Watanuki would only yell at him, but his eyes were vaguely troubled.

It was one day in the middle of week six that Doumeki got out of his class early. Watanuki only shared one class with him in the middle of the day, so Doumeki took his rare opportunity to see if he could catch whoever it was putting the notes in Watanuki's locker. To his chagrin, no one was there and the white, pristine paper was already settled on Watanuki's hard-soled shoes.

He knew he shouldn't. He'd never invaded anyone's personal privacy like this before in his life. It was wrong and Watanuki would never forgive him for it. But Watanuki had become increasingly jumpier and always had a strange look on his face whenever Doumeki managed to catch a glimpse of him reading the note before he put it away.

When he saw what was written, Doumeki fairly burned with rage. Innocent though they may have been in the beginning, it had become downright lewd now. The words were precise and left no doubt of their meaning as the writer described the very sexual acts he would like to do to Watanuki. To 'bring down my angel so that I might taste what heaven actually is'. Not to mention, there were downright insults about Doumeki himself for daring to think he could actually be around Watanuki, violent and cursing words that he was sure his friend had never known existed.

He debated whether to put the note back, but instead, shoved it in his pocket. If the latest letters were anything like this, it was no wonder Watanuki was acting strange. It was becoming increasingly like a stalker and he did not like the implication of the note that when they 'met', these things would happen almost instantly.

Watanuki seemed slightly surprised that there was no note at his locker that day, and as Doumeki watched, he thought he saw very slight relief. He came around the corner, as if his class had just ended then like normal, and Watanuki was the vibrant self he used to before the latest letters had sapped him a little of it. He no doubt hoped that the stalker had stopped.

Things weren't to be so easily solved, however, when the next note came. Watanuki paled as he read it and Doumeki moved fast enough to snatch it from the smaller boy's hands before he could protest. The degradation of Doumeki had increased, even going so far as to call him 'son of a whore' in one of the milder insults. This proved, obviously, that he had been watched when he'd taken the note out and hidden it from Watanuki.

Watanuki tried to act normal, tried to demand it back, but he could see the alleviation in those eyes that was glad he no longer had to hide it because of his pride. He had seen the increasing fear in Watanuki over the past two months of the notes and now that he knew, taken the decision away from Watanuki's pride, Watanuki seemed fairly willing to let Doumeki handle it.

What Doumeki did was demand to show them to Watanuki's employer.

She studied the almost fifty odd letters on the table, pulling one out and reading it at length, then another, in no discernable order. She did not, as he had expected her to, tease Watanuki for the love letters. Her face was schooled very blankly and she didn't say anything for near half an hour.

"You have a problem," she said at last to Watanuki as the boy sat and shivered. "This person is obsessed with you in a not good way. If something is not done, you will be in deep trouble, Watanuki."

"What do you mean?"

Yuuko lit her pipe and picked up one of the latest ones. "Look at how the note is written and compare it to the first or even second ones you had at the beginning. In the beginning, they were very romantic and sweet, wooing you. The later ones here are full of sexual tension and the urge to dominate. The writer is no longer content with just seeing you, writing to you. They want to violate you and by now, I would guess it would not be romantic sex."

Doumeki wasn't surprised, as he had expected this sort of thing, but Watanuki blanched and looked distinctly paler. The fear in his eyes was quite obvious and he looked as if he just realized that there were some things in life that were just as scary as the supernatural spirits that hounded him, if not more so.

"Most likely," Yuuko continued, "they will finally confront you and you will probably be raped."

How she could say it so emotionlessly, he'd never know. He knew she cared about Watanuki, but he'd never be able to remain impartial as her current visage suggested she was. He was burning with rage and knew that the worst thing he could imagine would happen to Watanuki would not be death, but rape.

"Wh-Wh-What should I do?"

"If you want my advice, the next time you get a note, write one back, suggesting that you two meet. Specifically choose a place you feel comfortable in and a time that you want. When you go to meet him or her on that day, Doumeki will be hiding and waiting in case something happens. Tell the writer that you are not interested in a relationship." When Watanuki nodded shakily, she suddenly smiled and went back to the alcoholic he had known her to be. It brought Watanuki back a little from his brink of fear and he stomped to the kitchen.

"Doumeki-kun," she turned to him, serious again. "When he tells the writer no, he will no doubt try to force Watanuki. Be ready."

"I know."

It was three days after their meeting with Yuuko about the notes, who had confiscated them all and burned them with the explanation of they carried bad karma, that the next note arrived.

Since he did not know if the stalker knew where Watanuki lived, Doumeki and Yuuko ordered Watanuki to either stay in the shrine or the shop instead. It was a testament to how shaken Watanuki was that he agreed without an argument. Though Watanuki didn't know where to leave the note, Doumeki had suggested just placing his reply in his own locker and waiting.

It was somewhat frightening that the reply was so prompt in agreeing for the meeting.

And that was why Doumeki was currently hiding behind a jungle gym set near the park. Watanuki had wanted to bring Mugetsu, but Yuuko and Doumeki had told him that was impossible. They wanted to stop the stalker, not have him shredded into tiny strips of flesh and blood and gore, which would no doubt happen the moment Watanuki became upset.

If there was something that Doumeki had to give the stalker, it was punctuality. He was at the park at five pm on the dot. The archer frowned, noticing that, as his theory suggested, it was a boy. He appeared average, with brown hair and brown eyes, one sort of student that would blend in with the crowd easily.

He did not like the look in the eyes that stared hungrily at Watanuki.

The fact that Watanuki didn't blanch on the sight of his 'admirer' was a testament to his excellent public manners. He had been raised to be perfectly polite and even now, when faced with the possibility of rape from a crazed person, he was adhering to those morals.

Doumeki, on the other hand, had no such ethics when the said person was about to commit such a heinous crime on the boy he had sworn to protect.

The park was amazingly empty, which did and didn't help Doumeki's state of mind. It did prevent others from getting in the way when something bad happened, but it also ensured that something bad _would_ happen. Perhaps if other people were around, the other boy wouldn't be so bold as to try something.

Either way, it was so quiet it was easy to hear what was being said.

"A-Are you the one who's been writing me notes for the past few months?"

His voice was normal toned and didn't even have a 'crazy-stalker-person' edge, but even so, it grated on all of Doumeki's senses. He gritted his teeth and clenched a fist at his side to prevent himself from just rushing over there prematurely.

"Yes, I am." It took all his willpower not to run over right there as the stalker's hand lifted to gently touch the strands of black hair that framed Watanuki's slightly apprehensive face. "My angel, I've waited forever to speak with you."

"Why d-didn't you just talk to me in school?"

"Why? Because _he_ was always there. You never noticed, did you, the way he stared at you. His eyes were full of lust. He's possessive and would do anything to keep you to himself. I fear that one day, he will lock you up in a room, chained, kept only to satisfy carnal pleasures."

_Are we talking about me or you, pal?_ he thought with suppressed rage and almost growled when the stalker took a step forward, which caused Watanuki to back up.

"But you're here now, with me. You must have accepted my feelings." Arms moved instantly to grab Watanuki and hold him close. Fear etched over Watanuki's face, but his stalker didn't seem to notice. "Come, I will show you what love is like."

"I-I-I'm s-sorry, b-but I-I…I-I'm in l-love with s-someone e-e-else."

Doumeki wasn't sure if Watanuki was lying or not. Perhaps he meant Himawari. He didn't honestly know and he wasn't about to worry about it just yet. As he had suspected and Yuuko predicted, this did not go over well with the other boy. His face became suffused with rage and a hand gripped Watanuki's hair so tightly, yanking his head back with a painful jerk, that the other boy cried out.

He was moving before he'd even registered. Even as that terrible mouth had moved down to leave a nasty bite on Watanuki's neck, Doumeki was running. Watanuki was crying, his eyes begging for help even if his mouth would never utter it. But that was okay, since Doumeki knew what Watanuki wanted and would never say.

His fist slammed into the other boy's head, then he jerked the brown hair in a much more painful way, even so far as he pulled a few strands out. Making a grunt of rage, the stalker shoved Watanuki on the ground and turned to face the assailant. Doumeki didn't see surprise that he was there, but then Doumeki wasn't seeing much of anything other than a very frightened Watanuki.

He dodged two punches as best he could. Doumeki was champion of the archery team, not mortal combat. But he'd gotten into a few scuffles enough to know where to hit someone to bring them down. A knee in the gut and a slam right at the base of the neck ensured the boy would pass out, or at the very least stun him.

Doumeki hadn't even fully turned before Watanuki was on his feet and wrapping his arms around the bigger boy. Surprised, he could only hug his friend and he felt the shivering and shaking transmitted to him through that. Watanuki had held up admirably, but right then, all he wanted was to just get the smaller boy somewhere he could relax.

In the end, they'd had a restraining order against the other boy and he had been sent for counseling for the attempted rape. Watanuki hadn't wanted him to go to jail, despite Doumeki's personal belief that that was where he'd belonged.

"So was it true?"

"Was what true?" Watanuki snapped back, in full form, as they walked home after a week blessedly free of love notes in the other boy's locker.

"Was it true that you're already in love with someone?"

"…Yeah."

"Kunogi?"

"…No."

Doumeki's eyebrows rose and he peered at Watanuki's face, who was being exceptionally calm and controlled as he answered. "Then who is it?"

"…Someone who I see everyday, who is evilly annoying, who has never complimented me in my life, and who is protective to the point of obsession." Doumeki's eyes widened, but Watanuki wasn't finished. He lifted his head haughtily and stared straight ahead despite the faint blush on his cheeks. "I'm still waiting for a love letter from them, the stupid and dense slowpoke!"

He didn't say anything for a minute and just watched as Watanuki squirmed, not looking at him. A slow smirk formed on the archer's face and he shrugged. "I'll write you one tomorrow, then."

"_Jerk!_ I never said it was you!"

But like he knew what Watanuki wanted even if he didn't say, he knew by that bright blush that Watanuki was glad. 


End file.
